


Day 3 - Mermaid

by RinYumii



Series: KLance AU Month - February 2019 [3]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: KLance AU Month February 2019, M/M, Mostly Fluff, One prompt a day, Short extract of a longer piece I'm writing, mermaid!lance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 17:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17646815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RinYumii/pseuds/RinYumii
Summary: Keith goes to the beach to see Shiro and Adam during the summer holidays, and makes a rather surprising encounter...





	Day 3 - Mermaid

**Author's Note:**

> Haiyo! I'm using a general greeting, it's easier for everyone.  
> Here is my MermaidAU, I hope you like it. I was supposed to write a longer piece I started writing a while ago, but it was going to end up as long as yesterday's prompt, if not longer, and I was running out of time, so I just wrote a little extract in the end...

Keith had been there for a week now, and he was already bored. At first, the beach had seemed nice, with long trails of warm, yellow sand, the many different kinds of shells buried here and there, the sound and the sensation of the waves under his feet, the seagulls coming to him in hopes for a bit of his sandwich… Yes, the first days had been nice, but there was nothing else he could really do, and he was tired of it. Sure it was a big change from the desert, the air there was completely different, but Keith wanted something more interesting to do. As a kid, he dreamed of big adventures, and he was still waiting for it to happen. He grew to learn not to expect too much from life, however.

He walked along a path of sturdily piled rocks which drifted downwards, and Keith followed it until he stumbled upon a small cave. It wasn’t very deep, just enough so he could sit there, his feet dipping into the salty ocean. So he did, facing the setting sun. This part of the beach sure was calm, compared to the other side where the cliffs stood, the wind blowing harder and the wave crashing on it’s hard surface, trying to break it in vain. Keith sighed. The sun felt warm on his face, and he closed his eyes to let it seep through his skin.

Then, there was a splashing sound, and Keith thought it might have been Shiro or Adam coming to tell him dinner was ready, but when he opened his eyes, he was faced with a tanned figure he didn’t recognize. The guy was sunk into the water up to the waist, and his brown hair shone in the sunlight. He had deep blue eyes that reminded Keith of the sky in the morning, back in Texas. The guy swam closer to him, and Keith thought he was dreaming when he saw a _tail_ instead of two legs. Like, a fish tail. He pinched his cheek and felt pain. It was not a dream. And here he had thought mermaids were only legends. Guess he was wrong; he simply lived in the wrong part of the planet to have the chance to witness one for real. But weren’t mermaids supposed to be women? Again, he had thought wrong.

“Hey,” the mermaid - or merman - said, eyebrows furrowed in dissatisfaction. “That’s my spot.” He pointed the side of the cave where a doodle of a mermaid was carved into the rock. The merman’s hands were webbed. Keith, full of curiosity and finally taken out of his boredom, reached forward and touched it. The other must have been scared because he dived back into the water, and Keith, startled, fell as well.

He opened his eyes, and the merman was looking at him, his eyes _glowing_ under the water. But his eyes weren’t the only things that glowed. His necklace did, too. Weird, it never did that before, even when he was taking baths and sinking into the tub. The pendant was just a sort of blue scale attached by a piece of red string Shiro had given him when he was a child. He didn’t remember all the details, but apparently, he had nearly drowned while on a cruise, and Shiro had given him this necklace as a present after saving him. 

Keith came back to the surface, being unable to breathe underwater, and sat back on the edge of the cave, completely drenched, his hair plastered to his forehead. He removed an algae from his shoulder and saw movement from underneath him. The merman poked his head out of the water, looking cautious.

“Are you okay, mister human?” he asked in a soft tone. Softer than when he first spoke. Keith just nodded, unable to find any words. The creature smiled, seeming reassured. He looked at Keith in the eyes, and he could swear he saw a tear roll down his cheek. That may have just been a drop of water though. The merman had no reason to cry, right? “I’m glad,” he continued. “Long ago, I couldn’t save a child from dying in the ocean, so I was scared you were going to die too…”

So he really was crying then. Keith nudged the creature with his foot, and he looked up.

“Hey, I’m fine. I’m not going to drown in this little puddle.” Silence. “Besides, I’m not a child.”

The merman smiled, and hoped himself from the water into a rock, next to Keith’s cave.

“Well, I don’t know,” he said. “All you humans look the same to me.”

“Have you met a lot of other humans?” Keith couldn’t stop himself from asking.

The creature shook his head. “I’ve only really met two. But sometimes, I see them playing in the ocean. They wag their weird split tails in the water, it’s funny. It’s no wonder they can’t swim properly with those.” He touched Keith’s feet, and the tickle made them twitch.

“They’re called legs,” Keith explained, “and we use them to walk and run on the ground. Something you can’t do with your weird unsplit tail.”

“Legs,” he repeated. “Legs to… how did you say it? Walk and run? I wonder what that feels like…” His voice sounded full of wonder and amazement.

“I guess it feels pretty normal for most of us. Maybe as normal as it is for you to swim.”

“Then it must be fun!” he said, spreading his arms above his head and splashing some water around. “Swimming is always a lot of fun for me.”

His eagerness and child-like speech made Keith smile. Finally, something interesting happened in his life. He had to thank his boredom for taking him out of his bed to venture out on the beach in the evening and meet an actual mermaid. Well, merman. Whatever. Did he have a name as well? Surely, everything that existed in the universe had a name. And even new discoveries were given a fitting name.

“Say, mister human,” the creature asked carefully. “Is walking and running fun for you, too?”

Keith had to think for a moment, but then found an answer he deed perfect. “It was today, in a certain way.”

“Mmh… How so?” he asked, leaning forward, his hands gripping the rock tightly, and Keith let a little smile flourish on his lips.

“Because today, I got to meet you. And that was definitely fun.”

The merman’s eyes glowed slightly for just a second, and Keith wondered if it was their way of blushing. They stayed there together for a while longer, the sky becoming darker by the second, a few stars already shining.

“This is my favourite moment of the day,” the creature said after a moment of quiet. “When I come to the surface, I usually sit where you are and watch the sun extinguish in the ocean. And then, the stars light one by one, and they get reflected on the surface of the water. But not during storms. On these nights, the clouds block the stars and the moon, and the sea is always dark. I don’t like it when it’s dark, so to cheer me up, I sing a song.”

“Do you only sing during stormy nights?” Keith asked, more to get the conversation going than anything else.

“Oh, no!” the merman said. “I also sing lullabies to small mermaids and baby dolphins when they can’t sleep. They say my voice soothes them, and they always sleep better at night. They say they don’t have bad dreams when I sing for them.”

“I see, that’s nice.”

Keith knew he had to go back soon, but he didn’t want to leave this place and his new friend. Though, he knew Shiro and Adam would worry for him if he missed dinner. They would probably think he drowned somewhere and would call the cops, worried to death. He sighed and stood up, wiping the sand from his shorts. The merman got back into the water to let him reach the rocks that would lead him back the the sandy beach, and back home. Keith turned back to him. The creature was still there, looking as though he had lost something extremely important to him.

“Well, I have to go home now. My family will worry if I’m gone for too long.”

“Will you come back tomorrow?” the merman asked in a soft tone.

“Yes, of course,” Keith replied, smiling fondly. His puppy dog eyes were very cute. “Same time same place, right?”

“Yeah!” He smiled eagerly and made wide movements with his arms while Keith turned his back and left. But after a few steps, the creature’s voice called to him again. “Hey, mister human! My name’s Lance!”

Keith turned and waved at him. “Goodbye then, Lance. I’m Keith.”

“See ya tomorrow, Keith!” Lance said, and then he dived into the water, his tail shining under the stars and the moonlight. Keith unconsciously reached for his necklace. Why had it glowed earlier? That had been a very weird experience. Lance as well, had been a very weird encounter. Maybe he had the answer to his question. He had to remember to ask him when he went back tomorrow. Well, if everything hadn’t been a dream.

**Author's Note:**

> So, that was it. Did you like it? I had so little time to write this one, so I'm really not sure about a lot of things...  
> I hope you liked that one though, and I'll be writing the longer piece I mentioned in the next few months/years...  
> I'll see you tomorrow for Day 4 - Hogwarts.


End file.
